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Thursday, March 28, 2013

Easter Egg Sandwich

Instead of decoupage, decals, natural hues from bark or moss or tea, pastel glitter dips, add-on beaks or wings or butterflies, hand-drawn stencils, google-y eyes, fuzzy feet, elaborate swirls, polka dots, tartan plaids, embossed golden curlicues, or anything in this slideshow, when we bother to decorate eggs, we go with Paas. The stinky, completely chemical stuff from the drug store that stains everything but the eggs, because the dorky loop egg holders never work.

It makes a big mess, the eggs stick to the carton because somebody put them back in there before they were dry, and then you have dozens of uneaten, mis-matched hard-boiled eggs in the fridge. When you peel one to make your eighth egg salad sandwich of the week, inevitably there are tiny veins of residual color running through the egg, which are visually interesting but definitely tend to dampen the appetite.

Plus, they do not contain sour jelly beans, Skittles, or M&Ms. The plastic eggs from the drugstore, on the other hand, do contain candy, and are already colored. Guess which ones everybody likes better?

No contest*.

Why put your eggs through all that?

Fry (or scramble!) 'em up and put them in a sandwich instead.

My Kind of Breakfast Sandwich

by Sharon Graves

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 20 minutes, including bacon time

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Ingredients

A little fresh basil

Mayonnaise (1 Tbs. per sandwich)

Thick sliced bacon (2 slices per sandwich)

Sliced crusty sandwich bread (I love cracked wheat sourdough)

Butter or olive oil

Cheese of your choice, grated (I used white cheddar, but gruyere would be great, too! 2-3 Tbs. per sandwich)

The amount of ingredients will vary based on how many sandwiches you want to make, but here's the basic idea:

Pre heat oven to 325.

For each sandwich, chop up a few leaves of basil and add it to a generous 1 Tbs. of mayo. Set aside.

Cook the bacon until crisp, and set that aside, too. Allow 1-2 slices per sandwich, depending on the size of your bread.

While the bacon is cooking, lay the bread onto a cookie sheet, 2 slices per sandwich. Place the cookie sheet in the oven and bake for 5-7 minutes, until the bread is just beginning to crisp up. Remove from the oven, brush with olive oil or spread a little butter on each slice, and return to the oven for another minute.

Remove from the oven again, and spread a generous amount of the grated cheese on half of the bread slices. You'll need 2-3 generous Tbs. per sandwich.

Before you return the bread to the oven again, cook your eggs. I've made these with both fried and scrambled eggs, and they are equally delicious. When you see you are about 1 minute away from the eggs being done, pop the bread tray back into the oven so the cheese will melt.

To assemble, take the bread out of the oven. Place cooked egg on top of the cheesy slice of bread. Top with bacon, tomatoes, and a handful of the arugula/greens. Spread a spoonful of the basil mayo on the non-cheesy slice of bread, and place that slice, mayo side down, on top of your sandwich.

Serve immediately. It'll give you all the fuel you need to go find the popular Easter eggs hidden in the back yard**.

* This, on the other hand, is a contest. The seventh annual Washington Post Peep Diorama Contest, to be exact. You can still vote for the "People's Choice" award here. The winning entries are below:

** My husband and I always forget to count how many eggs we hide, so we have no way of knowing when they've all been found. There's nothing quite like finding a purple plastic egg in a bush in late August with a six month old marshmallow peep inside. The peep, will, of course, look exactly like it did when it first came out of the package: forlorn and wishing it had been sold to one of those overachieving, artistic families who subscribe to The Washington Post.

On my Nightstand

I took a leap of faith and selected this one for when I next host my book club. A ribald take on race, time travel, and the south, it's hilarious right now, but I've just started. It too, just lost in the first round, to The Goldfinch, a book our group found had some incredible characters and stories, but was deeply in need of editing. I'll let you know if I agree with the verdict soon.